Grecian Formula

The other night, with the Greek political system in a deadlock and the euro in jeopardy, members of the Hellenic Council of America, a group that promotes the culture of ancient Greece, hosted a lecture at the Stathakion Center, in Astoria. The speakers were M. A. Soupios and Panos Mourdoukoutas, professors at Long Island University, who published a book of practical philosophy called “The Ten Golden Rules: Ancient Wisdom from the Greek Philosophers on Living the Good Life.” (Sample rules: “Master yourself”; “Treasure friendship.”) A philosophical air pervaded the lecture hall, which was decorated with oil portraits of Greek revolutionary heroes. Guests drank coffee from blue-and-white paper cups and marvelled at the scale of the Eurocrisis, which, after claiming the career of a Prime Minister, had now engulfed Italy. “Here’s the dumbfounding thing for me,” Paul Kapetanopoulos, a psychologist and documentary filmmaker, said. “How could little old Greece be the tipping point for the five hundred million people in the European Union? How could a country of eleven million be the tipping point for the whole world?”

The Hellenists in the audience seemed to agree that the ancient philosophers would have had something to say about the country’s current predicament, although exactly what, they weren’t sure. Socrates Kikis, a food distributor, prepared to philosophize: “You need a lotta time and a lotta coffee. Everything applies. It’s a Greek tragedy, actually.” He compared the warring of the country’s political leaders to rivalries between ancient city-states. “The same thing happened to Sparta and Athens,” he said. “They were fighting each other, and Greece went away—it disappeared.”

His friend Athanasios Kamberis made a comment in Greek that Kikis translated. “He takes a different view. He says Greece became rich very fast, and Menander said, ‘Nobody who’s honest can get rich fast.’ Which is true, actually.”

A computer programmer named Spyros Soumilas mused, “For years, Greece has been feeding on its own flesh. Now that the tooth reaches the bone, it hurts. And what is the solution? Change of mentality.” Quoting Euripides, he said, “My favorite Greek saying is ‘Conviction has no other temple but reason,’ ” an insight that he suggested could help the country pass austerity measures. Other suggestions: “You shouldn’t worry about things that are not in your control” (Epictetus) and the Socratic maxim “Know thyself” (or at least thy balance sheet).

After a while, the professors took the stage. Soupios, a thin, serious man with glasses, spoke about the idea that “the unexamined life is not worth living” and the difference between higher pleasures and pleasures of the flesh. “Let me say something about money,” he said. Tempting as it may be to characterize the ancient philosophers as ascetics, “the Greeks liked money just as everybody else likes money.” Nevertheless, he added, “The ancient Greeks were very quick to say the following: ‘Money is necessary for the good life but not sufficient for the good life.’ That’s from Aristotle, folks.” He suggested that the pursuit of wealth, while not a bad thing, had got out of proportion in the past century, and he brought up the yo-yoing stock market, American exposure to European losses, and Goldman Sachs’s role in helping Greece mask its national debt. “All these instabilities are related to immoderation, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “There’s a wonderful word, a Greek word, and Plato uses it a lot and so does Aristotle: pleonexia.”

The professor nodded. “It’s wanting more than your fair share,” he said. “It’s lack of restraint, folks. It’s the disproportion. That’s how you rack up a fifteen-trillion-dollar national debt like we have in this country, and all the debt in the other countries as well.”

The floor was opened to questions, and someone asked about Platonic references in “The Lord of the Rings.” “In terms of the Tolkien book, let me remind you that even that is Greek,” Soupios said. “Tolkien studied Plato at Oxford.”

Soupios was asked after the lecture whether the crisis in Europe would inspire people to rediscover philosophy. He thought about it. “That could be the only potential silver lining,” he said. “But I would be shocked. It is the voice crying in the wilderness, as the Bible says. I think the voice has something to say, but the question is, who’s listening?” ♦